THE CAMERON YOUNG INVESTIGATION
Cameron Young’s body, after technicians had lowered him from the balcony, was transferred to the New York State medical examiner’s office. Dr. Jarrod Lockard was tasked with the postmortem. Medical examiners and coroners had always been a peculiar lot to Walt. Outliers who took such a road less traveled in life that it literally led them to death. Being able to dissect the human body, Walt believed, had to come with some glitch in the psyche. Dr. Lockard was nicknamed the Wizard for his abilities to conjure every clue left behind by the bodies that came through his morgue. Jarrod Lockard was so much a genius in this particular niche that other aspects of life had gone unattended—like personal hygiene and appearance, as well as any effort to display the slightest hint of social awareness. Walt wondered if examining the dead had taken its toll on Dr. Lockard, as if each trip into the body of the deceased pulled the man further from life. Not so much toward death, but rather to some in-between place that left him alienated from the living and only able to associate with the corpses that filled his days.
Despite having just turned fifty, Dr. Lockard’s hair was bone white and made up of wild knots that hadn’t seen a comb in years. A few particularly enthusiastic strands stood out from the rest and appeared to carry an electric current. Combined with eyes set so deep in their sockets that the man needed to strain his forehead to keep his eyelids open, Dr. Lockard offered a perpetual look of surprise reminiscent of Doc Brown from Back to the Future.
“Come in,” the doctor said when Walt knocked on the door to his office.
Walt walked into the office. “Doc,” he said, extending his hand and doing his best not to look as nervous as he felt. Why Doc Lockard put the fear of God into every detective at the BCI was a mystery none of Walt’s colleagues attempted to explain.
“Thanks for getting on top of this so quickly,” Walt said.
Dr. Lockard offered a limp handshake that felt like poorly kneaded dough, and a stoic expression that was neither welcoming nor dismissive. He pointed at the chair in front of his desk. “You’ve got an interesting one here. Have a seat. There’s a lot to discuss.”
Dr. Lockard poured coffee into two Styrofoam cups and handed one to Walt. The doctor sat behind his desk and pulled a file folder in front of him.
“Cameron Young,” he said, opening the file and paging through his notes. “You ever read any of his books?”
Walt shook his head. “I’ve never found much time to read fiction.”
“Damn shame. I was a big fan of his. Thrillers. Good stuff.”
A quick image flashed in Walt’s mind of Jarrod Lockard reading by candlelight as he ate chicken wings and flipped pages, leaving greasy fingerprints behind.
The doctor pulled out a photo of Cameron Young’s naked body lying on the autopsy table. The Y incision ran from his shoulders to his pelvis and was closed by thick sutures that dimpled the pale skin. Doc Lockard slid the photo across the desk.
“I wish I could tell you the postmortem was routine. Unfortunately, it was anything but. Here’s what I’ve got for you. External exam showed extensive ligature damage to the victim’s neck consistent with a long drop hanging. His neck was broken at the fourth cervical vertebrae, which was subsequently displaced anteriorly, sheering the spinal cord. The victim fell eight and one-half feet from the second story balcony before the rope stopped his descent, producing approximately one thousand pounds of pressure on his neck. Another foot or two, and he might have been decapitated.”
Walt nodded slowly, examining the gruesome picture as if there was something to be gleaned from it. Finally, he slid the photo back to Dr. Lockard. “Sounds pretty clear cut to me, Doc.”
“On the surface. But it gets messy when we take a closer look at the neck anatomy. Do you know the difference between long drop and short drop hangings?”
“Long drops are what you just described. Vic drops from a certain height and the sudden deceleration from the noose breaks the neck. Like the hangings from the medieval times, and the crap they’re still pulling off in Iran. Death comes immediately. Short drops are when the vic slowly lowers himself into a hanging position and eventually dies from traditional strangulation.”
“Impressive, Detective. You’re correct on all counts. A couple other details that are pertinent: In short drop cases, the ligature trauma to the neck is less extensive. The noose slowly tightens and prevents oxygen from getting to the brain. Stay in that position long enough, and the brain stops telling the lungs to breathe. Or, if the noose is tight enough to constrict the trachea it prevents inhalation. Either way, the resultant cause of death is asphyxiation. In long drops, conversely, death comes from severing of the spinal cord. This is especially true if the position of the noose’s knot is under the chin, as it was in Mr. Young’s case. The sudden jolt of the rope running out of slack causes hyperextension of the neck and the consequent anterior displacement of the vertebrae. The problem I’m having with the postmortem in Mr. Young’s case is that he showed signs of both short and long drop hangings.”
The doctor slid another photo across the desk. This one was a close-up of Cameron Young’s neck.
“See here? A band of ecchymosis runs around the neck, above the ligature laceration produced from the long drop, suggesting that the rope had been slowly tightened for some period of time antemortem, or prior to him suffering the long drop trauma. Congestion in the lungs, as well as petechiae of the cheeks and mucosal lining of the mouth, support this conclusion. Subconjunctival hemorrhages paint a textbook picture of a slow oxygen deprivation coupled with increased venous pressure in the head.”
“English, Doc?”
“He was choked to death slowly before someone threw him over the balcony.”
Walt turned his head slightly to the side as he digested the doctor’s words. “He was dead before he went over the balcony?”
“Correct. The long drop trauma came postmortem. This conclusion is supported by the amount of blood produced from the ligature wound. In addition to the vertebra shearing the spinal cord, his left carotid artery was severed. If this had occurred at the time of death, I would expect to find arterial spray from the last few beats of the heart. But the blood pattern and loss were consistent with leakage of residual blood that had pooled in the vessel, rather than propulsion from a vessel under pressure.”
Walt ran the back of his hand over the stubble of his cheek as he considered the doctor’s findings. As he was thinking, Dr. Lockard moved the photo of Cameron Young’s neck to the side and slid another in its place.
“I’ve got a theory about the neck wounds.”
The new photo was of Cameron Young’s backside as he lay facedown on the autopsy table.
“Look here.” Dr. Lockard pointed at the photo. “The lateral side of each buttock showed signs of trauma—thin welt marks. Similar marks were noted on the chest and upper arms. Any guesses what these marks are?”
“I saw those when he was hanging from the balcony. I figured they were made by a whip.”
“You’re impressing me this afternoon, Detective. The marks are from a leather flogger whip. S and M stuff. Pretty brutal, too, from the appearance of the welts. And I believe this finding goes hand in hand with the slow drop trauma to the neck.”
Walt shook his head. “I’m not following you.”
“I suspect Mr. Young was reaching sexual gratification while being choked.”
“Autoerotic asphyxiation gone wrong?”
Dr. Lockard shook his head. “Erotic asphyxiation, yes, but there was nothing auto about it.”
Dr. Lockard pulled another photo from his file and again slid it in front of Walt. It was a tight shot of Cameron Young’s penis. Without moving his head, Walt shifted his gaze from the photo to Doc Lockard and raised his eyebrows.
“Why am I looking at this, Doc?”
“Based on engorged blood vessels in the shaft of the penis and superficial abrasions on the epidermis, Mr. Young had been fellated shortly before he died.”
Walt shook his head. “Someone blew him?”
“Crude language, Detective. But, yes. Just prior to death, someone used oral stimulation to bring Mr. Young to the edge of climax. The corpus cavernosum was swollen, but the vas deferens was free of sperm and the seminal vesicle had not released its collection of semen.”
“Doc, just get to the point,” Walt said, sliding the photo back across the desk.
“My examination suggests that someone performed oral sex on Mr. Young, bringing him to the edge of climax, but before he ejaculated the rope around his neck caused him to stop breathing.”
“Christ. You got all that from an autopsy?”
“Each body tells a story, Detective.”
The Wizard had been busy, Walt thought as he ran a hand through his hair and sat back in his chair.
“From what you see,” Walt asked, “he was a willing participant in whatever the hell went on?”
“Perhaps right up until the end. There were heavy amounts of the victim’s own skin cells under his fingernails, suggesting that he clawed at the rope around his neck before he died. I noted scratch marks on the neck above the ligature wounds.”
“So he panicked at the end and tried to take the pressure off his neck, but was too late.”
“Correct.”
“And no chance this was a suicide, as some defense attorney will surely claim?”
“Definitely not.”
Dr. Lockard pulled another photo from the file and continued.
“The rope used to strangle Mr. Young was jute rope, which we commonly see in S and M bondage. High friction, low stretch.” Dr. Lockard pushed the photo across the desk. “The same rope was used to bind his hands and wrists. Two important points here. Let’s talk about the knots that bound the victim’s hands first. As you know, some suicide victims secure their own hands behind their backs to prevent saving themselves if they have second thoughts.”
Walt nodded. “The voice of insanity safeguarding against the voice of reason.”
“In this case, it’s clear that someone else bound Mr. Young’s hands.”
Dr. Lockard pulled two more photos from the file. The first was of Cameron Young still hanging from the balcony, a close-up of his bound hands held together with rope stretched tight by rigor mortis. The second photo, taken at the morgue after rigor had softened, was of the knot.
“The knots used to bind Mr. Young’s hands were not the type seen in suicides. You see here?” Dr. Lockard pointed at the photo. “For a suicide victim to bind his own hands together, he has to use some sort of slipknot. Sink your hands into loose knots, pull your arms apart, the knots tighten. That’s the only way to do it. These were not slipknots. They were tightly bound knots. Doing some research, I believe they are alpine butterfly knots. This is outside my area of expertise, but it looks like the knots are commonly used in mountain climbing, and require two hands to complete. It’s impossible to tie two alpine butterfly knots this close together and step through them to get your hands behind your back. And it’s clearly impossible to have tied them blindly behind one’s back.”
“So someone else tied him up?”
“Correct.”
Walt gathered all the photos, tapped them a few times on the desk to organize the stack, and then placed them facedown to the side.
“So Cameron Young was getting his rocks off during a sordid S and M evening. Based on the extensive whip marks on his back and thighs, it was a violent night of games. Part of the foreplay included a rope being tied around his neck. The rope was tightened to some degree for added eroticism while someone simultaneously performed oral sex on him. The rope became too tight and he died before he reached climax. His partner panicked, tied the end of a long length of rope to the heaviest thing they could find, which ended up being the safe in the closet, and then tossed him over the balcony to make it look like suicide. Do I have your theory correct?”
“That’s a pretty clean summary of my examination. Have any suspects?”
Walt stood up. “I’m working on it. Thanks, Doc.”